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Thursday, January 12, 2017

Pipeline Opponents Speak Loudly, But Do They Have a Better Energy Solution?

From Investor's Business Daily:

Another day, another pipeline protest by "keep it in the ground" activists.

On Dec. 8, a dozen people swarmed a construction site near the Hudson River in an attempt to halt construction of Spectra Energy's AIM pipeline, which is designed to carry natural gas from New Jersey to Massachusetts. The protesters, who call themselves the HudsonStand12, were arrested and charged with criminal trespass and resisting arrest by authorities in Cortlandt, New York.

Those arrests come on the heels of the months-long protests against the Dakota Access oil pipeline project in North Dakota, which, of course, followed the brouhaha over the Keystone XL pipeline.

Climate activists are now hoping to block oil and gas pipeline projects across the country due to their claim that we must keep all hydrocarbons in the ground to avert catastrophic climate change. Those same activists repeatedly claim we don't need fossil fuels because we can rely solely on wind and solar energy.

But while they obsess over our carbon footprint, climate activists don't give a fig about the land-use footprint of renewables. Indeed, the dirty truth about "clean" energy is that it requires shocking amounts of land. In a recent report for the Manhattan Institute, I show that using wind and solar energy to reduce domestic carbon dioxide emissions by 80% by 2050 (80 by 50) will require covering about 287,700 square miles of territory — an area about the size of Texas and West Virginia combined.